


somebody to love

by SerpentineJ



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, brief jealousy as a plot device
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 12:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19173334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerpentineJ/pseuds/SerpentineJ
Summary: Crowley is, for lack of a better word, jealous.





	somebody to love

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: KSDKFKSDFLSKDJF.. crowley seems like the jealous type  
> this started as "crowley jealous fic" and ended as "serps thoughts on crowley/aziraphale in canon as a whole"

“Do you want to go for lunch?” Crowley asks.

“Oh-” Aziraphale jumps in his chair, peering up over his round spectacles. “Heavens, you startled me.”

“Didn't knock,” Crowley says.

“Of course not.” Aziraphale sets down his book, carefully, slipping one finger from between the pages. He pulls his glasses off the bridge of his nose.

“Lunch?”

“Did you have a place in mind?”

“I thought I'd let you choose.”

Aziraphale's expression brightens. Crowley can practically see his mind start whirring, flipping through his mental catalogue of restaurants. 

“How do you feel about crêpes?” Aziraphale asks – Crowley laughs, and basks for a moment in Aziraphale's answering smile – he really only goes to Paris with Aziraphale, nowadays. There's not much reason to go without him, now that he doesn't have a demon quota to keep up. 

“Crêpes are good,” he says.

–

As it turns out, crepes are very bad.

“Mm!” Aziraphale is practically glowing – he takes another bite of his layered confection with an air of pure pleasure, clearly delighted by the taste of fresh fruit and cream, light on his tongue. Crowley forks over his own meal. “Aren't they delicious?”

“I suppose,” Crowley says. 

The reason for the sudden and odd downturn in his previously good mood is standing behind the register of the crêperie. He's tall and a little past middle-aged, blue-eyed and salt-and-pepper-haired, and had called Aziraphale by name when he had walked through the door. He had passed him his telephone number on the corner of a napkin when he had brought their food. This isn't exactly what Crowley had imagined when Aziraphale had told him he'd found a new favorite crêperie. 

Crowley had snapped his fingers and made the inked digits disappear before Aziraphale had noticed them.

He pushes his shades up on his nose. The afternoon Paris sunlight spills through the shop's front windows like golden syrup. 

Out of all the mortal pleasures of the human domain, food isn't quite his thing. He likes the cars, and the music, and the clothes, and he really loves the alcohol, but he only eats when he's with Aziraphale or if he's drinking. Aziraphale's smile is beaming. 

It's stupid to be irked – Crowley has known Aziraphale for thousands of years. The man behind the register has probably seen him less than a dozen times. Crowley shoots him a nasty glare when Aziraphale's eyes are focused on his plate. It makes him feel better.

“What do you want to do next?” Crowley asks, draining the dregs of his coffee, setting the cup down on its saucer with a little click of porcelain. “Take a walk through the lavender fields? Shopping?”

“You make it sound so leisurely,” Aziraphale says, dabbing the corners of his mouth with his napkin. 

“Isn't it?” Crowley smirks. He curls over the tiny table. His legs stretch out under the table, crossed at the knee. “I'm enjoying my extended vacation. Hastur hasn't contacted me for weeks.”

“I would think you rather frightened him by killing a fellow demon in front of him, and then appearing to be impervious to holy water,” Aziraphale retorts. He folds his hands across the table. 

“Mm, that may be.”

Aziraphale levels a look at him. Crowley lets his grin stretch lazily across his lips.

“You should've seen the look on his face,” Aziraphale bursts out, honestly, after a moment, and Crowley laughs.

–

Crowley has known uncomfortably well, even since before the whole debacle on the tarmac with Adam banishing Satan, that his feelings towards Aziraphale have shifted dangerously from “necessary good” to “alright to drink with” to… something else. Whatever it is, it's the reason he had asked Aziraphale to run off with him when the Earth blew up, and had actually been hurt when Aziraphale had blatantly rejected him, and then had sped through Central London to ask him again. 

He mists his plants with less than his usual vigor. 

“It's stupid,” he mopes, ignoring the way his plants rustle with trepidation. “So what if he didn't want to go to Alpha Centauri with me.”

He lets the spray bottle drop to his side and sighs.

–

Stewing in his discontent is a very un-demonic – and very human – thing to do, so naturally, Crowley goes drinking. He ingests an amount of single-malt scotch that would give any ordinary human severe alcohol poisoning and tips the bartender generously. A woman across the room is making rather obvious eyes at him, but he's not in the mood to tempt humans right now.

“Angel!” He says, rapping insistently on the door of the bookshop before remembering it's not locked. He twists the doorknob and pushes the heavy wooden door aside. “Aziraphale!”

“Crowley?” A muffled, familiar voice comes from the back room. There's a thumping noise, and Aziraphale comes out of the storage area. “Oh. You seem…”

“Drunk,” Crowley mutters, stumbling over to him. “Oh, Aziraphale, I am so drunk.”

“Dear me,” Aziraphale says. His hands come up instinctively to Crowley's elbow, to stop him from falling. Crowley's sunglasses dangle off his nose – they pitch forward, about to fall on the floor. Aziraphale instinctively miracles them into the pocket of Crowley's black jacket.

He leads Crowley to the back room and lets him take a seat – Crowley slouches in the chair, slumped languidly over the back, long limbs absolutely sprawling. Aziraphale looks over him with an expression filled with resignation.

“Have a drink,” Crowley says, cracking open one yellow eye. “Don't let me be smashed alone.”

“You seem to have a bit of a head start,” Aziraphale says, but he pulls out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey anyways.

“You'll catch up, angel,” Crowley says, and he pulls one glass towards him.

–

It's not that Crowley's life revolves around Aziraphale, exactly. He has other hobbies. He listens to music and watches the news. It's just that he also happens to be thinking about Aziraphale in the back of his mind when he does all of those things.

It's completely unfair. Aziraphale eats, and buys books, and fusses about the nature of goodness without thinking of Crowley in the slightest. Trust an angel to be self-centered. Crowley debates going out for a spin around the block on his wings – he hasn't flown in a while, preferring to drive – but he decides against it.

–

When Crowley next drops by the bookshop unannounced, Aziraphale is busy with a customer. An older woman titters and looks demurely up at Aziraphale through her eyelashes. Aziraphale hands her a book – the woman presses her hand on top of his when she takes it.

Crowley skulks around the shadows of the shop. He lets his eyes drift over the spines of old-looking books. 

Crowley is, for lack of a better word, jealous.

“...although I confess, I am particularly fond of his older works,” Aziraphale is saying, smile bright in the way it is when he's talking about his favorite novels. Crowley sidles up next to him. Aziraphale looks around at him before turning his attention back to the lady.

Having Crowley hover over his shoulder, dressed from head to foot in black, wearing sunglasses indoors, puts a bit of a damper on the conversation – the woman leaves. Aziraphale shoots him a disapproving look.

“You needn't scare away all my customers,” Aziraphale says, setting a book back on the shelf.

“It's not like you sell anything, anyways,” Crowley retorts. He folds his arms. Aziraphale is so annoying. 

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale replies. “It's common decency, Crowley.”

“I'm a demon, angel,” Crowley says, smiling, white teeth on display. “Dinner?”

–

Crowley ends up buying dinner. It's a lowkey Italian restaurant, with dim candle-lighting and tiny chairs. Their knees brush under the little table. The pasta is good. Crowley has always preferred red sauce over white.

Aziraphale's meal, on the other hand, is decadent and heavy on the cream. For an angel, he's certainly one for sensual pleasures.

“Be a dear and pass me the bottle,” Aziraphale says. Crowley picks him the bottle of wine they're currently splitting. Nothing too fancy. The corners of Aziraphale's mouth curl up into a quietly pleased expression as Crowley pours him another glass.

“Makes you glad we avoided the Apocalypse, doesn't it?” Crowley asks, fond.

“I'm sure you think that every time you turn the key on your Bentley,” Aziraphale retorts, but the tone of his voice is contented. 

“Mm.” Crowley murmurs. He's had too much to drink. The atmosphere is going to his head. He's gotten uncomfortably comfortable – satiated enough by the glow of Aziraphale's smile to forget that the angel doesn't exactly feel the same way about him. 

Aziraphale's continuous denial of their friendship over the past 6000 years is something he chooses not to think about. Consorting with a demon is an angel's ultimate dirty little secret.

“I did it for you, you know,” Crowley says, taking another sip of wine.

Aziraphale pauses.

“Come again?” He says.

“Gave up on Alpha Centauri,” Crowley sighs, swirling his glass. “Drove through a ring of burning fire. Blew up my car.”

“You didn't choose to do that,” Aziraphale says, as finicky as ever.

“Same difference.”

“It's not the same.”

“Anyways, it wasn't really because of the car or the booze or the stupid Velvet Underground,” Crowley says, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, even in the low lighting of the restaurant, the wine fuzzing his head. 

Aziraphale looks at him. 

“What was it for, then?” He asks.

Crowley smiles at him. It's a fully balanced smile, instead of his typical sardonic smirk or lopsided grin – it creases the corners of his mouth and makes him look no older than 3000.

“Dinner at the Ritz,” he says.

–

“I've been quite cruel to you, haven't I, dear boy,” Aziraphale murmurs. They're back at his bookshop for their customary nightcap, sitting next to each other on Aziraphale's overstuffed, albeit comfortable couch. 

“Hmm?” Crowley says. “Whaddya mean?”

Aziraphale pats Crowley on the hand. His fingers linger. He strokes Crowley's wrist in a small gesture of intimacy – the type only allowed by the effects of copious amounts of alcohol.

One corner of his mouth turns up. His thumb slips over the bump of bone on the side of Crowley's wrist.

“Nothing,” Aziraphale says, splaying his fingers leisurely around the knobbly back of Crowley's hand and leaving them there. “You called me your best friend, even when I said I didn't like you one bit.”

Crowley shifts around on the couch to look at him. His sunglasses are discarded somewhere on the table along with their abandoned glasses of drink.

“How'd you know that was about you?” He says. “I was drunk.”

“Are you saying it wasn't?” Aziraphale raises his eyebrows, pulling his hand back. Crowley scoffs at him and slouches back into the couch. 

“Don't tease me,” Crowley grumbles, but he grabs onto Aziraphale's hand with his own. “At least pretend like you think I have other friends.”

Aziraphale smiles at him, warm and slow.

“Well, it's a fact that works to my advantage,” he says, cryptically. Their shoulders press against each other. “I'm sorry I never called you my friend.”

“'M sure you did. At some point. Sometime.”

“I'm sorry I told you to do all the dirty work because you were Fallen.”

“Well. I am a demon.”

Crowley is warm for a cold-blooded animal, and pliant by Aziraphale's side. He seems to be drowsing off.

He almost hears Aziraphale say something else before he drifts off.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: the part where crowley asks aziraphale to run off with him.. gets rejected.. drives through central london to beg him again.. gets rejected.. and then goes to aziraphale's bookshop to find him and try to convince him AGAIN even after he was like “im going and im NEVER going to think abt you again”.. and then drove through a ring of fire and almost died and blew up his most prized possession just bc aziraphale told him to… HELLO
> 
> tumblr leofemt twitter serpentinej


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